European Commission
EUROPEAN RESEARCH ERA

Anton Anton

 Discussant session 2.2

 

 1. Forward-looking and evidence-based approach to EU R&D policy is a sentence we are using frequently. The truth is that there is a very week connection between the two notions due to the between the moment we launch a program and the moment we can have a solid evidence-based analysis of the results. Let’s look at ERA-NET:

Program starts in 2002; Program ends in 2007 and Analysis starts in 2008; Analysis ends in 2009. In the mean time, in 2008 ERA-NET Plus is becoming operational, based on what, on partial results and the real wish to add flexibleness to an existing instrument.

Under those circumstances we must guess the effects more that anticipate them and we rely more that we want on the best practice of the community. This is one factor we do not look at for the moment. I think that broader analysis of the past programs and methods are necessary since we have the historical series at hand in order to determine the time delay.

 2.       There are big differences in priorities for Community research policies post 2010 among European countries. At the two extremes are two types of countries: the “leaders” and the “donors”.

 

The “leaders” are the countries listed at top in all scoreboards and the catching up countries are those at the bottom of the same scoreboards (e.g. Innovation Scoreboard). In financial terms the leaders are gaining money in FP’s and the catching up countries are “donors” (losing money) in the same system. Due to those differences they have not the same expectations from the future.

 

 

Levels	Strategies	Financing sources	Allocation of projects	Thematic	“Leader” country expectation	“Donor” country expectation
National	Must have a national strategy	National funds, public and private	National Competition	According to the national strategy.	Developing new capabilities	Developing local capacities for R&D and innovation
Bilateral	National strategy connected to the European one	A la carte distributed national funds. Everyone is financing it’s national team.	National competitions coordinated bilaterally.	Themes with potential of becoming regional or European	Low interest	Testing the capabilities and matching themes with international partners.
Regional	National strategy coordinated regionally on major regional issues	Common pot for management, and for topping (co financing from EU). Common pot (real or virtual) composed of national contributions.	Two steps competition: first at national and then at regional level.	Domains of interest for the region	Interested as long as the funds are allocated based on competition similar to FP.	interested in a common virtual pot of money, do not want to donate like in FP, want their  national funds to be spent by local teams.
European	European strategy (FP)	European common pot, dedicated to R&D and Innovation	European competition	European priorities	Major interest	Ultimate prize, little chance to become a leader in a project, seeking for a position of trusted partner

 

 

The “leaders” are expecting that due to their ability more and more R&D funds to be attracted by their community and in this respect their primary target are the FP programs, where they are experts and their chances to win are maximized. They will be less interested in programs financed “a la carte”, they will set up the pace in their fields. They are conscientious that soon they will lose contact with real life and invent topics on their own. In order to avoid that, they will attract from time to time newcomers in their cluster. This process of renewal is long, does cost a lot and will be always based on past achievements and for sure will not foster R&D and Innovation all over Europe.

The “donors” are fighting for consolidation and expansion of their National Research Areas as part of European Research Area. They expect more R&D activity to take place in their countries, not only in terms of projects but also in terms of Institutions and Infrastructures. They will be against other common pots of money than FP to be allocated through competitions because that will diminish their capacity to finance their local R&D community.

In conclusion, the key is in coordination of the national strategies, the development of regional strategies in order to have a clear connection also at bilateral and regional level, not only at European one as we have now. That will ultimately stabilize also the national R&D funds and avoid unfortunate decisions like that taken by Romanian Government to cut the R&D funds in 2009, (after a significant increase between 2005 and 2008), back at the level of the year 2004.

 

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